Review: Eargo Link

Eargo is widely known for its ultra-luxe over-the-counter hearing aids; the company makes some of the most expensive OTC aids on the market. But to make its lineup a bit more accessible, there's the Eargo Link, a low(er)-priced, no-frills alternative to its more sophisticated options.

At first glance, the Link hearing aids don’t appear any different than standard Bluetooth earbuds. You get a glossy black plastic and a bulbous design that rests inside the ear’s concha, albeit bulging out a little. At 4.74 grams (fitted out with a small ear tip), it’s considerably heavier in the hand than a lot of modern hearing aids, but it doesn’t feel particularly weighty in the ear, due to the particulars of its design—even after sustained use. They can, however, be tough to wrangle into the right place as they need to be carefully rotated into the ear to fit snugly.

Photograph: Eargo

In addition to its design, the Link is distinguished from its forebears by its lack of an app. While it pairs to your phone like a set of standard Bluetooth headphones, it doesn’t work with Eargo’s standard hearing aid control app. It doesn’t have any physical controls either. Rather, the earbuds are touch-sensitive and rely on (well-placed) taps to operate them. More on that in a bit.

These control limitations mean there’s not a lot to using the Link hearing aids; there’s not even a traditional way to control the volume. Instead, you’ll spend most of your time double-tapping your way through four Listening Programs, each one offering a higher amplification level (reportedly tuned to speech) than the last. A final mute setting turns all amplification off before cycling back to Program 1. The four programs don’t seem to vary in any other way aside from overall loudness, and there’s no way to tune the aids for certain environments such as TV watching or outdoor use. By and large, you’ll just have to experiment to find out what works.

The good news is that the Link does a solid job at boosting audio, though I found it a bit blunt, amplifying everything across the board from voices to footsteps to wind noise. Moving up the programs, each is, well, one louder. Other than increasing levels of loudness, I didn’t hear any difference among them.

Eargo includes six sets of ear tips—three sizes in both open and closed designs. The default medium ear tips are gargantuan for me, and even the small size is a snug fit. Using open ear tips, I experienced a fair bit of echo and the usual “booming own voice” effect, but neither is overly onerous. Screeching feedback was common when inserting the aids, but otherwise, I never encountered any. Neither did I experience any problems with hiss except when using the highest volume program.

Photograph: Eargo

Operationally, my only complaint is that taps are difficult to register because of the way the earbud sits in the ear. You have to come at it from a slightly unusual angle, which makes it hard enough to get one tap to land cleanly on the back of the device, much less two. Even after a week of use, I was still struggling to get double taps to register reliably.

The fact that the Eargo Link looks like a set of Bluetooth earbuds is perhaps not a coincidence: The unit excels at media streaming in ways that I’ve never achieved from other hearing aids. One tap puts the unit into streaming mode, from here you can only pause and play media with additional taps—or double-tap to activate/deactivate active noise cancellation (ANC).

You’ll probably want to spend 100 percent of your time in ANC mode, as this not only blocks out the outside world but also kicks the Link into some kind of magical bass boost mode, complete with the kind of fuzzy, funky warmth you usually only get from premium headphones.

The hearing aids are rechargeable, with a specified nine hours of run time per charge. The included case—amply pocketable—carries four extra charges. That’s not epic battery life, but given that the Link aids are not targeted at all-day wearers, it’s probably sufficient for most users.

There’s no getting around the price, unfortunately. While this is Eargo’s “budget” model hearing aid, at $799, the Eargo Link is expensive, in the same price band as Sony’s CRE-C10, which are smaller and include a bevy of configurable options, including an in-app hearing test and frequency tuning. Feature-wise, the Link compares more closely with aids that are half its price—and while it does a better job than most of those lower-end devices, it’s hard to justify the price when you’re only getting the basics, never mind how great they are at streaming media.